I'd been Waiting for the Thud (Prose poem)

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I'd been Waiting for the Thud

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My ex-wife put a packet of wet wipes in the glove compartment during the 90s, she insisted we still needed them even though we sadly no longer had snot-nosed children.

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She was waiting for this day. This day when her foresight would guide us like a star, when I’d desperately need a wet wipe and they’d be right there where I need them. And she was right. Over the years I've needed so many wet wipes yet I throw out the whole pack each time and replace it so she never knows. Sounds so spiteful now, but it was playful when it started.

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All it takes is one spilled coffee and I’ve got sticky fingers for the 80 minute commute to work. There is no worse feeling than sticky fingers. I’d wash my hands in blood if it meant they’d no longer be sticky. I’d wash our marriage in blood too.

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When I hit that tree, the thud lasted five minutes. Our brain chemistry dictates time, it seems so obvious to me now. Time never runs out, but brains do all the time. Though I must say, the wet wipes make a rather aesthetically-pleasing pile of blood-soaked tissues. I don't care that my only point of comparison is the pile that’d fester at the bottom of the tin trash can in the household bathroom growing up with five sisters and a mother. If this is my deathbed then instead of ornate pillows I’ve got a cushy pile of blood-laminated wet wipes, pulsating in the windshield-magnified sun as majestic proof that sometimes things really do work out perfectly.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/9ji1z4/growing_up/e6rn40s/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/9jg8ed/pane/e6rmma9/?context=3